


What noisy cats are we

by counteragent



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Always Female Sam, F/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-20 16:45:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1517810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/counteragent/pseuds/counteragent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some things were meant to remain mysteries. Like if your parents talked dirty to each other and how your sister sounded when she wanted to jump the bones of any living thing. Especially if you were the only living thing around.</p><p>Set near the end of Season Two.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What noisy cats are we

Sam barely heard a rustle in the leaves before she felt the  _Cat Sìth_  land on her back. The cat’s left paw missed, but its right dug into her as it clung on, growling. Sam screamed. The bobcat-shaped monster swung its weight to the side. Its claws gouged her right shoulder, four streaks of fire. Sam grit her teeth and pushed off with her feet, using the cat’s momentum.

They fell together. Sam landed across the middle of its wiry body. Her head hit the ground with a scary thunk but she managed to flip her legs over in a graceless backward somersault. Then she was rolling away, the dust of the back-woods road clouding her lungs. She trained stinging eyes on the monster, coughing heavily. The cat revived almost instantaneously, fuzzing out of corporeal form from its prone position and blipping back into an attack position with a bad-TV-reception static burst. _Shit_. A fall like that would have stunned a werewolf, and Sam would have had time to--.

The cat pounced as a shot rang out. Midair, it squealed in pain. Then it was gone in a burst of spirit energy that made Sam’s ears pop.

“Sam!”

Dean’s voice seemed far away. It must have been a hell of a hail-mary shot he took. No time to wait for him, the cat could be back any second. Sam scrambled to her feet, just in time for a wave of nausea to hit. She slapped a hand to her wound and grunted in surprise; it felt burning hot and wasn’t bleeding nearly enough. Hurt like a mother, though. Sam staggered over to where she’d dropped her gun, holding it in her left while her right applied pressure to her shoulder. She could shoot lefty. If only the world would stop pitching back and forth like a two-by-four in a stormy sea. If only her blood hadn’t started rushing in her ears, blocking out the sounds of Dean’s approaching footsteps, the wind through the forest trees, her own thoughts.

Time slowed. Sam stared down at the four parallel slices in her shoulder. They were barely bleeding, and puffy with an unnatural inflammation. Worse, they were lined with a purple-black substance. It was on her right hand, too, inky stuff on the tip of her fingers. It faded as her body absorbed it, and Sam opened her mouth to say, _no, no, no_.  

All these years. All these years of self-controlled silence. Of careful, careful consideration of every joke, every deflection. Of four years at Stanford and two of those with no contact at all. Of loving Jess like her life depended on it, and mourning doubly when it didn’t. Of learning to live again with the burden she thought she’d lain down. After all that, Sam was going to be undone by a cat. A cat that wasn’t even _real_.

Dean burst through the trees, eyes wide with fear and adrenaline. “Are you OK?”

Sam shot at his feet. Dirt sprayed up where the bullet hit, striking his jeans. He flinched away.

“What the hell!”

“Stay the fuck back, Dean.”

Sam turned and ran.

\---

There were books and papers scattered around the Impala. It reminded Dean of the time he and Sam blew up her calculus book at the end of 11th grade. She’d hated that class. She’d gotten an A anyway. Dean drew his gun and approached. He could see Sam was in the back seat, her head bent as she fiddled with something.

A burst of static ripped through the quiet. Dean swung his gun around, aiming to kill. A walkie talkie lay on the ground next to a book.

“Dean, don’t open the Impala doors, whatever you do.” Sam’s voice was breathless, higher than the he’d heard since she was in high school.

Dean picked up the walkie talkie but left the book. “What’s going on?”

Sam didn’t answer. Dean heard harsh breathing and a small, hurt cry. Fuck instructions. He raced toward the Impala.

“Stop!” Sam said, her hand slapping against the window. “Stay back! I’m…I’m…” Sam was actually panting now. Her hand slid down the glass, and Dean looked in. Her shoulder was bad, obviously infected. Her tank top was cut away, falling beneath the cup of Sam’s bra and exposing the cuts the cat had made. Sam was fumbling with the lid on a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. It opened, the lid tumbling to the floor and rolling away.

Dean rapped on the window. Sam bared her teeth at him, not breaking eye contact as she poured half the bottle on her shoulder. It bubbled and oozed like Sam’s third grade science experiment. She let out an animal hiss.

Dean reached for the door handle. “Dean, goddamit!” Sam’s voice yapped from the walkie talkie on his hip. At least Sam was back to using her words. “The _Cat Sìth_  was in heat. If you come in here we’ll end up fucking on the back seat, thanks to the grade A pheromones my hijacked glands are producing.”

Dean backed off from the Impala like it burned him. Sam was back to harsh, pained breathing, like the outburst of human speech had cost her. Although now Dean wondered if pain was all that was stealing Sam’s composure, and _ugh_. No thinking about that. Some things were meant to remain mysteries. Like if your parents talked dirty to each other and how your sister sounded when she wanted to jump the bones of any living thing. Especially if you were the only living thing around.

“'Hijacked glands' may be the sexiest thing you’ve ever said.” Dean picked up the books and the papers on the ground. The case. She’d thrown all the case files out of the car for him.

Sam’s hand hit the window again, its middle finger extended. “The good stuff,” she begged.

Dean didn’t need to be asked twice. He went to the trunk, then slapped the bottle of triazolam against the window. Sam was threading a needle with shaking hands. The thread pushed into the eye, and she looked up. Dean tapped his own chest with the case file. Sam nodded. They both knew Dean could research perfectly well. If _Cat Sìth_  heat magic had a cure, Dean would find it. Not the time to wonder if it didn’t.

Dean gestured “down,” then set the bottle by the door. Dean spared one last glance into the Impala. Sam’s voice at his hip was whining in the back of her throat as the needle pushed into her skin. She chewed her lower lip savagely. Dean shuddered in sympathy. Sewing yourself up under the influence was never a fun time. Good thing Sam could take it.

\--

Sam couldn’t take it. It was worse than the time in ’96 when she’d been jacked up on pain meds. She remembered her head had felt painlessly detached from her body, like it was being carried around on a velvet pillow. She’d started laughing, twitching pathetically in her hospital bed. Dean had wanted to know what was so funny. But it was too funny to ever say out loud. _I’m in love with you_. Absurd. She’d bit her tongue and giggled until she snorted like a mule. Even funnier: _I don’t think I’m gonna grow out of it_. Too hilarious to say, really. Even if Dean liked to talk about feelings. Her head was on a pillow. _Ha ha ha_.

Sam was on the third line of stiches. They wormed their way through her skin, ugly and crude. She was gonna look like Frankenstein. No, like the monster. Frankenstein was the idiot doctor. She’d look like the monster, who wanted nothing more in the world than something like itself to love. So stupid. If only Sam could kill the love she felt inside. She’d watch it rot on the ground before her, ballooning with bloat and bursting with maggots. She’d watch it dry out, desiccate to a leather mummy. She’d watch it weather into dust and scatter on the wind. No stitches and lightning for her dead desires. She’d be clean. Free.

The desire hit during the fourth line of stitches. Later, Sam would marvel how quickly her body had produced the right hormones. Later. Right now her words her swirling away like a spoon through alphabet soup. She had to---. Her hands stiffened into claws as a wave of lust hit her and she fought it. She started rocking back and forth on the seat, the shifting pressure building her need, not soothing it. She was out of time. The needle dropped, swaying on the end of its thread like a pendulum. The last line of stiches would have to wait. Sam lurched forward, her mind serving up an image of Dean smiling his Sammy-only smile. Fuck. She scrabbled at the door handle. It clicked open and she almost fell out.

The fresh air brought her a swarm of smells—growing things, dying things, and best of all, Dean. Dean was 30 feet away from her, his head in a book. He’d stripped to a T-shirt before the hunt; his broad shoulders stretched the fabric as he hunched over the text. His brow was drawn, and his almost-girly lips were mumbling the words softly. The afternoon light leaned into him, burnishing the blonde in his hair. He looked serious, concerned. He looked beautiful.

Sam grabbed the bottle of pills, slammed the door shut, and swallowed them dry.

The cuffs went on next, first her ankles, then— _oh god ow fuck_ —her hands behind her back. The stitches strained. The still-open fourth cut bled. Sam looked at it incuriously, the way a drunk looks at loose change, before her brain came back online. Not enough to worry about. Not now. Sam flopped down face first on the seat, toppling like felled tree. The pain in her shoulder when she hit made her cry out.

“Sammy?” Dean said, and his shadow blocked the light from the window.

She garbled something. Maybe _don’t leave_ or _go away_. Maybe she shouldn’t have taken so many pills. Maybe she shouldn’t be rocking against the leather of the Impala. Again. In plain sight of her brother, and tied up like a sacrifice. Maybe she should have taken _more_ pills.

Oblivion swept her under while Dean’s promise to “kill the motherfucker” bounced around the car.

\---

A low groan from the walkie talkie raised the hair on Dean’s neck. _Shit_. The triazolam Sam forced down her throat 45 minutes ago should have knocked her out for six, maybe seven hours on a good day. And it hadn’t been a good day.

The book had been mercifully clear: find the phantom cat, kill it, smear its blood on the wound of the infected, and voila. Your sister won’t want to have sex with you or anything else within 20 feet. Easy as pie. Except Dean hadn’t found the phantom furball yet, and Sam was waking up.

He was on the right track; he’d found a few drops of black cat-blood here and there. But it was damned hard to track something that only sometimes had a body.

“Deeeeean,” Sam purred, the static of the airwaves making Sam sound like something they’d pick up on the EMP meter.

“Sleep it off,” Dean said.

“I can’t. It’s in me now. Mixing with the demon blood. Like a Slurpee from 7-11. When we were kids. So many flavors.” Sam actually giggled, a horrifying contrast to the throaty moan that followed.

“Do you remember when we were kids, Dean?”

Turn the walkie talkie off? Easier to track the cat thing. And easier to look Sam in the eye after all this was done. Sam was probably about to start spouting off about boys she’d almost screwed in high school, or how good Jess was at giving head. And while Dean wasn’t one to turn down a little girl on girl, even hot lesbian sexcapades held zero interest if they involved your sister.

Then again, if Hello Kitty popped up back at the car, well. The Impala’s standard warding might hold, it might not. Semi-corporeals were tricky bitches. Dean was pretty far out; he’d need every second of warning to get back to Sam in time.

Dead was worse than fucked up. Dean left it on. Maybe the sound of Sam’s voice would actually draw it out. He’d have to resist the urge to answer, though.

“Do you remember when we blew up my calculus book?” Dean did a mental double take. What did that have to do with anything? Dean had gotten them both drunk afterward, and they’d stayed up half the night making up vulgar stories about the constellations—Orion definitely has a bigger dick than Hercules, Sammy—and slug-bugging each other for every shooting star. It was good times. It wasn’t—whatever this was.

“Mmm,” Sam said, and it was a rumbling, sultry sound. Guess downers plus heat equals sex kitten, Dean thought before he could stop himself. Where was this going? Dean didn’t want to know.

Sam told him anyway. “I really wanted to fuck you that night.” 

Dean tripped over his own feet, going down hard on his knees. He was back standing immediately, despite the ache. Surely the cat heard that racket. Everyone in the whole world could probably hear it when your sister said she wanted your ass.

“All I could think about was how you’d taste like tequila and maybe your tequila taste was different than mine. I should be able to know. Because you were always there and I look at your mouth more than you do. It’s like it’s my mouth, like your face is my face.”

Sam moaned, and Dean carefully tried not to remember how she’d writhed on the Impala’s leather. He tried not to think about how Sam’s boobs must be trapped beneath her weight, their fullness creating a sweet ache.

“I was drunk, so drunk. But I remember thinking that. And then I thought about how I look at the rest of you, too. How your hands would be rough from PT but that I wanted them to feel me up anyway. All the way up. I knew you’d know how to get me off, how to touch me _right there_ while you slid your fingers inside.”

Your face is my face. Dean’s hand stayed steady on the gun.

“Dean, these cuffs are good. They make me feel like I can’t hurt you. Like Max. He hurt his family.”

He was gonna kill kinky ghost Heathcliff _twice_ for this. His Sam was strong, and good, and everything Dean wasn’t. Sam deserved better than all of this, and she sure as hell didn’t deserve some kind of sex possession that scattered hidden truths like broken glass on a playground. 

“Sometimes I want to hurt you a little, ‘cause you see Sammy when you look at me. A kid with missing teeth. I look at you and I see everything.”

A rustle to Dean’s left and a darting shadow in his peripheral vision made Dean smile.

“But I want you to bend me over, just like this. While I’m safe for you. _Please_ , Dean.”

Dean was still smiling as he fired.

\---

In the brief clarity that followed coming her brains out, Sam started to cry tears of rage.

She was just so _fucking pissed_. One moment of miscalculation on a hunt, and she was begging Dean to bend her over.  And then she was rutting against the seat, writhing and twisting until she got a rhythm with her feet lodged in the corner and her toes flexing, pushing her forward and backward. The friction dragged deliciously against her heavy breasts, and the seams of her jeans rode along her clit. It wasn’t all she wanted, but just talking to Dean had felt so good, so right, that in her heat haze she’d been sure it was only a matter of minutes until he came to help her out. He would put his warm hand around her joined wrists— _it’s OK Sammy_ —and slide inside her, pulsing with a matched need.

For maybe a minute more, until the hormones surged again, she would know this for the sick dream it was. Better make good use of that minute then. Sam wiped her face on the seat and wriggled laboriously into a seated position. She wedged her back against the door opposite of the direction Dean had gone. She prayed, hard, for Dean to hurry.

Sam was just starting to feel unsettled again, a heat pooling between her legs, when Dean smushed the dead cat against the window.

“Heeeeere’s kitty!” he said, his voice in creepy stereo through the glass and over the walkie talkie. His grin was psychotically wide. Sam started to chuckle. The day Dean was unable to treat a dire situation like life’s newest knock knock joke she might just give up herself.

Dean mimed rolling down the window, then pointed to Sam.

“Yeah,” she said. “Cover your nose and mouth first though.”

Dean looked briefly surprised at her coherence, but nodded quickly. He dipped out of sight, and when he returned his over shirt was tied around his face. Thank god Dean always tied a flannel around his waist like it was mid-1995. Sam didn’t want to know how a bare chest would mix with the cat cocktail in her blood. Sam started the awkward process of rolling down the window behind her, grabbing it with her bound hands and circling around with her hips and torso.

“I gotta smear the blood on the wound.” Dean spoke through the walkie talkie, staying across the car in plain sight.

The window creaked as it rolled down, so slowly. Sam’s thighs shook with the effort. “OK, on three. Do it fast, I want…” Sam drifted.

Dean rejoined: “One, two, three.”

And Sam was gyrating, rolling the window down the last few inches, and Dean was running around, his inky black hands held before him and his stupid shirt over his face and then he was _there_ , right behind her.

“Sammy, Sammy,” Dean was saying, and it sounded like _love_ and _safety_ and _home_.

Then his hands were covering her wounds, working the blood into the cuts. He pushed at the stitches, breaking a couple in his haste to smear in the blood. He petted the open groove of the final slash, carefully administering the antidote. It was going to hurt like hell in the morning, but now it felt right to have Dean’s touch inside her.

Your face is my face, Sam thought. And then the flannel brushing her neck and back was gone, the better for Dean to nuzzle behind her ear, to whisper, _yeah that’s right_ and slip his right hand lower. A black smear followed his touch, tracking down her sternum and circling around to push down her bra and cup her breast.  He thumbed a nipple and they both groaned. His left hand brushed away her hair from her neck. Delicately, he skipped the tip of his tongue up her neck from shoulder to earlobe.

The teasing tickle contrasted perfectly to the rough caress of his hand on her breast, as he kneaded and tugged the nipple harder. He was balancing her out, teasing and soothing, demanding and begging. She knew her brother would be perfect like this.

Her _brother_. With a cry, Sam released the door catch and pushed off hard with her feet. The door swung open, sending Dean stumbling back and tumbling Sam out onto the ground. Her shoulders and wrists twisted beneath her, still bound. Sam cried out in pain, and wriggled until she was flopped on her side. She craned her neck back to look at Dean.

He was scuttling backward in the position he’d fallen, his face twisted in shock. He looked like he was watching his house burn down. He looked like he’d dropped the match himself.

Only one thing mattered to Sam: he was far enough away from her.

\--

They drove in silence to the motel. Sam wished with every painfully audible breath that the heat hadn't burned off the downers in her system. She'd like to sleep off the rest of her life.

Sam took first shower. She gripped the tatters of her tank top all the way into the bathroom. Its ragged strap was smeared with blood and black magic. Both flowed through her veins still, the one quieting the other.  Sam was a supernatural petri dish. What else was new. Sam dropped the shirt into the trash. Her bra went next--they weren't cheap but Sam would eat glass before she wore it again.

The tepid water felt boiling hot on her injury. She stuffed her hand in her mouth, biting down. She knew Dean would blow off the small whimper she made. Sam had a feeling Dean was going to get a lot better about personal space from now on. She scrubbed with soap one handed. Shampoo was beyond her. She let the water clump her hair into strands that split and rejoined in its flow. The jets of water made a cage around her. Leaving was impossible. Sam pushed back the curtain.

Sam's fresh pair of jeans turned traitor, sticking to her too-wet skin like they were made of rubber. Her socks soaked up the puddles of water she'd left, squelching disgustingly. She doubled up on tank tops, using two from her brand new Hanes men's three pack. Sam left the right straps off, stretching the necks. The straps cut under her armpit.

She'd been saving the pack for a special occasion, like she used to save her desserts as a kid. She once kept a package of Sarah Lee chocolate logs in her duffle for a week, imagining each day how she'd poke her tongue into the creamy sugar inside each perfect roll of cake. They were smashed beyond recognition when she opened the wrapper. Dean had laughed as she licked each inch inside the bag. She'd smiled with a beard of crumbs. Smashed up could still be good enough.

Her injury had lost its unnatural puffiness, but it was starting to bleed again through the ripped and unfinished stitches. Sam held a towel to it and opened the door.

\--

Dean was just finishing sterilizing the thread and needle when he heard the door open. His heart thudded like he was camped outside a wendigo's hideout. He held the needle and thread out. An offering. He remembered feeling the same way when he gave Sam a stolen Christmas present the first year their dad didn't show. It had turned out to be a glittery baton. A girl's toy for the kind of girl Sam never was. Sam had known immediately it wasn't right. But it was all he had.

Sam surprised him by shaking her head and sitting quietly on the edge of her bed. They always sewed each other up, before. Dean's heart slowed a fraction. He kicked a chair over, keeping his hands sterile. Sam's long neck stretched as she turned her head away. Dean wasn't sure if it was to avoid him or the needle he slipped beneath her skin. He saw Sam breathe hard, nostrils flaring in that way that was so funny when she was pissed. His favorite mole spasmed in a tic. She must be hurting.

It had been rough while Sam was in the shower. He'd thought about just leaving. No note, his cell phone on his empty bed. It would be better for Sam. In the long run, anyway. Maybe she would even stop hunting, find a new girl, find a new life. But Sam would jump to conclusions. She'd think Dean didn't love her _any_ way, not just that way. Which was unbelievably stupid, but Sam was only smart about some things. Or maybe Dean was just too selfish to let Sam hate the empty space where Dean used to be. Maybe Dean just wasn't a good enough man to let that happen. 

"I’m going to get my own room,” Sam said.

Dean's hand tugged on a stitch. Sam hissed but kept her breathing even through force of will. She closed her eyes, like the light in the room was too bright.

"Sorry," he muttered. Dean cut the thread in order to re-knot it before starting the final, biggest slash. He looked at Sam, scanning the cut of her clavicle, the jut of her chin. The fan of her eyelashes on her high cheeks. Sam was gorgeous. She was all hard lines one moment, soft bright eyes and blinding smile the next. But trying to find desire for her was like listening to another man's prophet. You might agree with their words, but you just didn't _believe_.

It took Dean three tries to feed the end of the thread through the loop, and then he lost the shape altogether. "Sorry," he said again. Sam needed to heal clean, and he wasn't helping. 

"Dean."

Sam waited until he met her eyes. Dean felt like he was falling in slow motion. He couldn't do any better for her than stitch her up with dime-store thread. He watched her blink harshly, damming up her tears. She knew it. She knew he wasn't going to be enough. He stopped breathing.

“I’m not going further than that," Sam said. "I still want to be partners.”

Slowly, the sound returned to the room. The air conditioner sighed in the corner. 

"OK," he said.

"OK," Sam echoed.

Dean tied the knot. 

\--

Sam crashed on the bed after Dean taped off the new gauze. A bright, white patch over where they'd sewn her back together. Dean went alone to go buy the extra room. He returned with coffee from the lobby and a key for the next room over. 

"It's only decaf, just a warning."

"No, that's good. I'm going to try and sleep anyway."

Dean gestured with the key. It clanked against the plastic diamond that declared it Room 16. "I could take the new room, you could stay and rest."

Sam thought of her clothes in the trash can, a stinking pile beneath a towel drying with her blood.  She imagined Dean walking out the door, leaving her in a bed with bloody, rumpled sheets. She couldn't stand the sight of her own mess. Not if she was going to keep it together. She shook her head.

"I've gotta work through my stuff," Sam said. It was the first time she'd admitted that the things she'd said in the car were true. Dean looked at her steadily but dented his lower lip with his teeth. A tell. He already knew. 

Sam turned to pack. She was fumbling with a roll of socks when Dean came over to help. The side of her body next to him seemed uncomfortably warm, like standing too close to a fire. She was cold everywhere else. 

“You know he’s not good enough for you, right?” he said softly. Her heart stuttered. Trust Dean to try and make her feel like she’d won something, when she’d lost so much. To try and make this seem like another crush she'd had in high school. God, she loved him.

Sam zipped up the bag. The click of the teeth grinding together announced they were finished. The side of her mouth hitched in a broken smile. She was trying. “I just figured I wasn’t his type.”

Dean regarded her solemnly. “Well, your hair is a little weird.”

The laugh that seized her felt like a full contact blow. "Jerk," she gasped.

Dean grinned at her with wet eyes. He even gave her a slight "it's true" shrug. She supposed the fact that she wanted to deck him was a good sign. She'd get through this. They’d get through this.

Sam walked out into the night.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Written for salt-burn-porn, for the prompt "what noisy cats are we".
> 
> Link for monster reference (it is a phantom cat, but of course I made up the heat transference entirely) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_s%C3%ACth

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A long, low time ago](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11223888) by [veausy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/veausy/pseuds/veausy)




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